DECISION MADE... TAKE NO MORE ORDERS FROM OTHERS I was stationed In Palestine in 1946 there was no ISRAEL, and Palestine was a British Protectorate. In the post war armed forces environment it was... “Yes Sir”, “No Sir”... “If it moves Salute It ... if it DOESN'T move - Paint it White”. I'd spent two years as an Airborne Motor Cycle Dispatch Rider attached to the 6th Airborne Division. In training I had parachuted 13 times, each time with a different objective, mainly to create what was known as “beach-head” which was a “Command Post” for Operations. The only time this happened was when we were “dropped” near Tel Aviv when my job was NOT to carry “dispatches” by an Airborne Motorcycle but to jump out of a plane with a battery (for the radio operators) strapped to my right leg - something I had never been trained to do, but that didn't matter as I got ten minutes training on the flight to Tel Aviv. There is a special way, it turned out, to parachute with a heavy lead battery strapped to your leg. This special way was YOU WERE FIRST IN LINE so that on reaching the DZ (drop-zone) YOU WERE “HELPED” out of the door with the other 19 Paratroopers standing in line behind YOU. We had only “seconds” when the GREEN Light came on for all 20 of us to EXIT the plane... I didn't need their help - I managed to swing my battery-laden right leg out of the door first which pulled me out of the door. Then, on the way down, I was to pull a pin that let the battery hang 20 feet below me and of course hit the ground up to 20 feet away from me. The whole operation was a NON-EVENT. We took command of the main highway to the entry to Tel Aviv and nothing happened, after a few days of inactivity we went back to our base camp in Haifa. When I returned from separating Jews and Arabs in Palestine to be “demobbed” (demobilized) names used at that time for a returning Service man, I decided NEVER to take ORDERS from anyone ever again. Car Dealing was good business because of the “after the war shortage” but that didn't last so the next best was SCRAP DEALING. It was the same as before, SCRAP was in DEMAND... There was also a “Hungry Market” for raw materials. All you had to do is FIND it COLLECT IT and DELIVER IT... NOTHING HAS CHANGED... FIND a HUNGRY MARKET AND FEED IT!
